Patrick Bond wrote: > Joseph, many thanks for the correction on Gore, as I hadn't read 'Our > Choice'. A few points, and I expect your usual insightful rebuts: > > * I suppose I'm let off the hook, somewhat, by the fact that it is /only > /cap 'n trade that has gotten any traction in Washington as a global or > national climate strategy (hence that's where I've seen Gore's inputs, > e.g. in Kyoto when he insisted that cap 'n trade be included in the > Protocol in exchange for Washington's support - which ended up being > 95-0 /against /Kyoto in the US Senate in 1998);
While he backs the carbon tax, Gore has presumably put much more work into cap 'n trade. However, the point is that Gore and other advocates of "using market capitalism as an ally" do back the carbon tax. The real division is not between the carbon tax and cap and trade, but between both and a comprehensive system of environmental planning and regulation. > > * I sense that there is zero potential for getting a carbon tax aimed at > climate passed globally or nationally, yet if there were such a tax and > if it went to the Green Climate Fund (supposedly to reach $100 bn/year > by 2020, if you believe Hillary Clinton, hahaha) in a way that didn't > exacerbate existing power relations and if it didn't fund False > Solutions - i.e. if it really were a Climate Debt payment from North to > Southern /people /(not elites) - then I would probably come out in > favour of it, whatever that's worth; But even if it were $100 bn/year it would still be used to fund false solutions. This doesn't change just because of the size of the Market- fundamentalist Climate Fund. Of course taxes are part of any system that will be used. In that sense, one could imagine a tax system that was merely a supplementary tool of the government and was used to fund environmental regulation and planning, mass welfare, and other positive goals, and that really did provide help to the global masses. But that wouldn't be the current "carbon tax", which is aimed at being an alternative to such regulation and control. I am not "anti-tax": let's tax the wealthy and the corporations. But that's not the "carbon tax". > > * we have a very insignificant carbon tax in SA and not much of a debate > (I reviewed it here recently: > http://triplecrisis.com/south-africas-carbon-tax-debate-disappoints/ > )... and I'm wondering if you think I'm taking the right tack in > opposing it as useless /because it is so low that it doesn't have any > apparent impact on price elasticity of demand for fossil fuels; / I think it's quite reasonable to point out the low levels of various carbon taxes make them merely token affairs. This is indeed a major issue. If the tax is low, it doesn't do much, while if it's high, its major disruptive effect on the economy could only be countered by the very regulation and control which the tax is designed to avoid. But I think that a high carbon tax is a disaster in its own right. When the implication of the criticism of the low level of the carbon tax is that it would work if only the level were higher, then I think a serious mistake is being made. > > * but I think the challenge you have in fundamentally opposing a carbon > tax is that at some point, if it is high enough, a tax has the same > impact as a command-and-control prohibition on fossil fuels... and of > course it all demands on price elasticity and income inequality, as to > how it works; I think that the above paragraph is mistaken. For one thing, what is needed is not simply "a command-and-control prohibition on fossil fuels". What is needed is environmental planning and regulation that affects not just the energy industry, but industry overall. The role of energy in the economy is such that this issue can't be treated simply as cigarettes, where if everyone suddenly stopped smoking cigarettes industry would roll on unaffected and agriculture would only suffer relatively minor dislocation. Instead, there needs to be a fundamental recasting of the industrial and agricultural infrastructure so that the use of fossil fuels can really be devastated, so that this change doesn't undermine mass welfare, so that other pressing environmental problems are also dealt with (clean water crisis, overfishing crisis, agricultural crisis, industrial poisoning crisis, etc), and so that the infrastructural changes needed to deal with the amount of climate change that is already inevitable are dealt with. A simple example is the issue of mass transit. One can't assume that if high gas prices make it impossible for workers to drive to work, that this automatically results in adequate mass transit being available. As a matter of fact, gas prices shocks in the US have sometimes resulted in the curtailing of public transit in various areas. That is the spontaneous market result of simply increasing the carbon price. And serious mass transit is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the industrial, agricultural, and infrastructural changes that are going to be needed. > > * so yes, the 'if only' was meant to indicate that there is a > substantial difference between cap 'n trade and taxation (especially if > the latter has the Hansen-style rebate to all citizens, so as to gain > political popularity). You judge cap and trade by what it has turned out to be in reality, but you judge the carbon tax by an idealized picture. Now, will there a Hansen-style rebate for all citizens? 1) Many influential advocates of the carbon tax stand for something else. 2) In practice, the rebate provided is not a Hansen-style rebate, but simply something to sugar-coat the measure. In British Columbia, for example, the result was a tax shift away from big business. The need to get the carbon tax passed won't result in the wonderful tax system imagined by Hansen and some others, any more than the need to get taxes passed Congress have resulted in fair tax system in general. 3) With all due respect to James Hansen, who has been a determined advocate of the dangers of global warming, his economic standpoint isn't so far from Al Gore as you might think. Maybe it might be in the future, as he sees the environmental crisis deepen. But for now, many scientists who have done excellent work on the scientific analysis of global warming, are quite orthodox with respect to establishment economics. >There are so many ways to critique cap 'n trade Yes, and I respect the work that you and others have in providing detailed critiques of cap `n trade. That's an important thing to do, and to popularize widely. But you don't seem to realize that cap and trade and the carbon tax are really quite similar. They were both devised to have Adam Smith's invisible hand do the heavy environmental lifting. The automatic results of an increasing carbon price are to replace the need for planning and regulation. And in both cases, as they are implemented, more and more flaws and scandals emerge. You imagine a carbon tax run in the James Hansen-style. But if James Hansen were the "cap and trade tsar", so to speak, then cap and trade -- while still being a failed program -- wouldn't have had a number of the scandals and absurdities which it presently has. I think one sees, if one looks closely at If the carbon tax, that as it gets implemented, all sorts of complexities and scandals emerge. More generally, I think that a fully James Hansen-style tax not only will never be implemented, but it wouldn't be sufficient if it were. That's because at best it aims to have the environmental measures neutral in their affect on the masses. This neutrality is a chimera -- and doubly-so in a time of severe austerity. But moreover, what is needed is much more than neutrality. There has to be a fight for the idea that environmental planning and control must consider mass welfare as one of its goals: mass welfare and environmental control must be integrated. Otherwise the masses are not only going to be devastated in the coming period of infrastructural change and environmental disasters, but they are going to end up as bitter opponents of the environmental measures that are put forward. The idea that tax-neutrality and green jobs will automatically preserve the mass welfare is a chimera, the environmental version of market-fundamentalist trickle-down promises. Well, there will never be a stable and complete system of environmental planning and control under capitalism. But it is the idea of such a system of environmental planning and control, linked with mass welfare, which can gain mass support of the working people. And it is only such support that will allow a determined struggle against all the scandals that are presently taking place in cap and trade or other establishment environmental plans. Environmental planning will never be stable under capitalism, but the mass struggle for environmental planning and control can be a major field of the class struggle. But this requires mass support, whereas the carbon tax threatens to be a major catastrophe for the environmental movement that will alienate it from the masses and cement it to establishment environmentalism. > (I must get into this in detail again because of Robin Hahnel's recent > articles in RRPE and CNS) but the talk I gave at the Brazilian Society > of Political Economists yesterday in Rio - slides to be posted soon at > http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/default.asp?11,65,3,2636 - concluded with these > 'fatal flaws': > - inventing property right to pollute is effectively 'privatizing air', > a moral dilemma given unprecedented inequality; > - GHGs have non-linear impact, not reducible to commodity exchange (a > tonne of CO2 produced at 'X' not same as a tonne reduced at 'Y'); > - the corporations most guilty of pollution, and the World Bank (most > responsible for fossil fuel financing), are the market's driving forces > -- and the United Nations is utterly incompetent at regulation; > - many offsets -- e.g. monocultural timber plantations, forest > 'protection', landfill methane-electricity -- devastate local > communities and ecologies; > - price of carbon in these markets is haywire, not least due to > corruption, fraud and theft -- with no prospect of regulation; > - dangerous potential for markets to become multi-trillion dollar > speculative bubbles, similar to other exotic financial instruments; > - encourages small incremental shifts, distracting us from big changes > needed across economy, energy, transport, consumption, disposal; > - 'market solutions for market failure' is not an appropriate ideology > after the world's worst-ever financial market failure > These are excellent points. But what surprises me is that you don't see that the carbon tax is subject to its own version of most of these problems. It is another attempt at "market solution for market failure". > * and if anyone wants the two books I did on this topic last year - > Durban's Climate Gamble and Politics of Climate Justice - let me know > offlist. Thanks for mentioning them. I'm sure they will be worthwhile. I have just ordered them on our local inter-library loan. > > Ciao, > Patrick > > On 6/8/2012 2:17 AM, Joseph Green wrote: > > Patrick Bond wrote: > > > >> Many of these libertarians believe climate change is a plot by Al Gore to > >> impose world carbon taxes. If only -- for Gore is actually instead a > >> self-interested huckster for carbon trading, which is failing miserably in > >> Europe, as well as in the US (except California) in the wake of the 2010 > >> closure of the Chicago Climate Exchange. > >> > > Gore backs both tax and trade and a carbon tax. His book "Our Choice: A Plan > > to Solve the Climate Crisis", states that > > > > "I have long advocated the first option--a CO2 tax that is offset by equal > > reductions in other tax burdens--as the simplest, most direct, and most > > efficient way of enlisting the market as an ally in saving the ecosystem of > > the planet." (p. 343) > > > > And "In my opinion, the real solution would include both a CO2 tax and a cap > > and trade system, and I believe that will eventually be our choice." (p. > > 345) > > > > Gore is correct in identifying the carbon tax, and nost just cap and trade, > > as a market method. He is wrong in advocating that market methods will save > > the environment, and in saying that both the carbon tax and cap and trade > > have worked. > > > > It makes sense for a "self-interested huckster" and neo-liberal such as Gore > > to back the carbon tax. It makes no sense for any opponent of neo-liberalism > > or friend of the environment to do so. So I hope that the "if only" in the > > quoted paragraph, with its implied support of the carbon tax, is an > > inadvertent error of writing, rather than the author's real stand. > > > > -- Joseph Green > > _______________________________________________ > > pen-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > > ----------------------------------- Joseph Green [email protected] ------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
